David M. Shribman: Two parties, many factions

In 1860 and 1948, two election years when racial issues predominated, there were two Democratic parties, each with its own nominee: John C. Breckinridge and Stephen A. Douglas in the 19th century, and Harry Truman and Strom Thurmond in the 20th. There arguably were two Democratic parties in the 1930s ― one led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and another opposed to FDR's New Deal ― and two different ones in the 1960s, one supporting Lyndon B. Johnson's push for civil rights and the other opposing it.

Today there may be four Democratic parties, as identified in a YouGov poll of 19,000 Democrats in a Cooperative Election Study analyzed by The Economist: progressive Democrats, establishment Democrats, religious-oriented Democrats and isolationist Democrats.

But perhaps the most important finding from this poll is that the largest bloc (40% of the party) is the progressives.

This is the group whose faces are Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, both of whom identify as democratic socialists and who have been barnstorming the country, sometimes together, to condemn President Donald J. Trump and his MAGA movement as assailants against democratic values.

The progressives are the most highly educated and whitest group of Democrats, a set of characteristics that two generations ago would have described establishment Republicans such as Sen. Prescott Bush of Connecticut (father and grandfather of presidents, all three Yale graduates) and the Dulles brothers (Allen, the CIA director, and John Foster, secretary of state, both Princeton graduates).

The progressives, however, have a vastly different view of American life than those learned men did. Almost all of them (98%) believe whites possess "white privilege" ― a characteristic that the Bush and Dulles families surely personify. About 3 in 4 advocate a boost in welfare spending, not a view embraced by their Republican progenitors. They support increased healthcare spending, a view at least one (former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as establishment a figure as any who has strode the Earth in the past century), but not many, establishment Republicans share.

This group is in the ascendancy, and its views diverge dramatically from those of the other 60% of Democrats. Its adherents outstrip the others in advocating for decreasing the ranks of police and opposing boosts in the number of border patrols.

All of which raises the question of whether the Democrats are heading for a smash-up at the same time that, as Trump faces an inevitable fade from the GOP scene, the Republicans may be approaching a similar crisis.

"The Democrats have the same problem Republicans have ― but in reverse," Douglas Rivers, the chief scientist for the survey, said in an interview. "The difference is that the Democratic progressives don't control the Democratic Party the way the MAGA Republicans control the Republican Party."

The problem both parties face as they look toward the 2028 presidential elections is in the nature of the caucuses and primaries that select the eventual nominees.

These early vital political contests often favor candidates from the most vocal and most committed elements of the party ― a characteristic that marks the Democrats as much as the Republicans.

This is particularly true in Iowa, which in recent years often has held the first contest. Liberals in the Iowa City area (the home of the University of Iowa is sometimes called the Peoples Republic of Johnson County) and other urban areas (Des Moines, Ames and Cedar Rapids) lean leftward, while conservatives in rural areas and strongholds of religious conservatives (small towns like Le Mars and Orange City, along with the larger Sioux City) prefer conservatives.

The difficulty is that voters in primaries and caucuses often are their own worst enemies. They support candidates they like rather than candidates they find acceptable and that others may like ― in other words, they support political figures who thrill them in the winter and spring but often will disappoint them in the fall, when candidates at, or more often near, the extremes fail to attract large numbers to their standards.

In the Democratic Party, for example, the common perception is that moderates support cutting spending to reduce the deficit. Moderates want to take a harder line against immigration than progressives but still oppose mass deportation and are Iran war skeptics. These so-called moderate positions are not thoroughly unacceptable to many progressives ― and would allow the party to appeal to independent voters, the ultimate swing group in U.S. politics.

"Independent voters are the people who decide the elections," said David Brady, a Stanford University political scientist. "The number of voters who decide elections are fewer and fewer because fewer and fewer states or even congressional elections matter today. But while not only independents ― but especially independents in key places ― are the ones that matter, independents in pretty much every part of the country look the same."

These Democratic divisions come at a time when the Democratic brand is weak.

The RealClearPolitics average shows that 57% of Americans viewed Democrats unfavorably. The Republican brand is no stronger, for the public views the Republicans much the same way (56% unfavorably).

The result: an American political crisis, for it cannot be healthy when Americans so dislike those who serve as arbitrators of our civic life, select the candidates for national office and govern legislation on Capitol Hill.

All this comes at a time of generational transition in both parties.

The general election in 2020 was a contest between two old men, one (Joe Biden) born in the second year of World War II, the other born in the first year after the war (Trump). Both were shaped by the Cold War and the beginning of the mass consumer economy, which produced the television and the transistor radio. The new Republicans and Democrats are shaped by cellphones, driverless cars and AI.

The challenge for both parties is how to appeal to a middle ground that views each of them with skepticism, even fear. The struggle in the Democratic Party is especially difficult, for it has no overreaching figure like Trump, nor a leader-in-waiting like JD Vance.

The death of Robert F. Kennedy of New York, the eclipse of Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, the general feeling that Hubert H. Humphrey was stale, and the emergence of a progressive insurgency propelled the Democrats into the 49-state disaster of 1972. Their task in 2028 is to avoid that fate.

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David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.